


we can go swimming

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Banter, Childhood Trauma, Dreams, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Visions, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Implied/Referenced Suicide, Inspired by Poetry, Introspection, M/M, Nightmares, Non-Linear Narrative, Pining, Sexuality Crisis, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 03:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21206900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: So let the rain come down / then we can go swimming.Finn and Kylo bond in their dream-within-dreams."You seemed lost.""I can't sleep.""Come with me."





	we can go swimming

**Author's Note:**

> One had feathers like a blood-streaked koi  
another a tail of color-coded wires.  
One was a blackbird stretching orchid wings,  
another a flicker with a wounded head.
> 
> All flew like leaves fluttering to escape  
bright, circulating in burning air,  
and all returned when the air cleared.  
One was a kingfisher trapped in its bower,
> 
> deep in the ground, miles from water  
Everything is real and everything isn’t.  
Some had names and some didn’t.  
Named and nameless shapes of birds,
> 
> at night my hand can touch your feathers  
and then I wipe the vernix from your wings,  
you who have made bright things from shadows,  
you who have crossed the distances to roost in me.
> 
> "Birds Appearing in a Dream," Michael Collier

“Tell me, again, why you’re here.”

“Something to do with my broken bond to Rey. It... _latched_ onto you.” He makes a strange motion with his hands, as if tying a knot. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Maybe I’m sensitive to the Force. That’s why.”

Laughter wells up from Kylo. Finn throws another stone across the sunset-smeared water, watching the ripples spread as it skips a few times and then sinks.

“And maybe I’ll close my eyes when the fireworks go off.”

“What?! I haven’t seen fireworks since -”

“Okay, definitely closing my eyes if you start talking about your childhood again.”

Besides him, Kylo is quiet. Finn slaps a mosquito away and scratches a bite on his arm. He takes a deep breath, and he thinks of nothing but crickets and frogs, as they live and die by this lake. The mountains sweeten the air, dewy and mossy. The soft rumor of the wind gossips in the cherry-bark trees.

Kylo says, almost wistfully, “I tried to drown myself here when I was ten years old.”

Finn squeezes his eyes shut. As soon as he does, he can feel where Kylo is - feel the prickle of cold air as his prison cell recycles oxygen, feel the hum of force shields like the depths of a fishnet as it closes above his head. Nausea churns his stomach.

“Why did it have to be me?”

“There are worse things,” Kylo starts, and after a beat, Finn realizes he isn’t going to elaborate.

The booming begins, like gunfire. The night bathes in the light and splashes his eyelids with color. His friends cheer in the distance, and he sits alone on the other side of the lake, sweating through his cotton shirt, talking to someone who isn't there for anyone else.

“Why aren’t you with them?”

“I liked it better when you were quietly brooding.”

“Well...” Kylo bows his head. “Happy Endor Day to us, then.”

/ / /

The flowers bloom and wilt; the sun rises and sinks; the temple is built and destroyed.

“You let it happen,” Kylo says.

He looks at his mother and tries to imagine her as a young woman, full of hope. He used to think she was unbreakable; he used to sleep in the grove behind the temple, far from the other padawans, and dream of how he could become unbreakable, too.

And he used to listen to the whispers. _They are afraid of you. Your anger, your power, your potential - it frightens them. They know they can’t control you._

He wanted to believe that more than anything. He would confess at night, _I can’t be something I’m not. They can’t change me. I have to be angry. I wouldn’t be anything without it. It’s the only comfort I have left. I won’t let them take that away._

And the voice would tell him, _I know what you are feeling. I can help you. I can show you what your anger is truly capable of._

_I just want to stop hurting._

_If you are nothing without your anger, then what would you be without your hurt?_

Leia raises her chin. “Forgive me.”

Pain. That is where she keeps her secret, in the way she carries her pain. She aches to reach out to him, and he instinctively pulls back.

“You let it happen,” he repeats.

He can smell the flowers of the hidden grove. Even now, after everything he’s done, he can feel her trying to find him. He doesn’t ask for her forgiveness, and her pity burns at the back of his throat. Another shape appears, at once a stranger to him and a close memory.

“I know it wasn’t right. I know I hurt people. But no one can resist power like that.”

“I did,” Finn says. “I was young and angry once, too.”

“I can’t be like you.”

“No, you can’t.” Finn closes his eyes. “You can’t be like me.”

He dreams he is a child again; he dreams that he watches himself as a child; he dreams that he is a child being watched by his older self.

/ / /

When Finn wakes up, his forehead shines with beads of sweat as light from the window lands on his cot. His room, like every other room in his block, is narrow and functional. One bed, one desk, one window.

For a moment he believes he is elsewhere - and he is, but not where he thinks he is - and suddenly he’s vomiting. It swells inside him and he rolls onto his side, letting it out on the floor. The temperature of his room remains at seventy-five degrees. Consistent, comfortable. Nothing like the Finalizer.

He would rather die than go back. On the surface, he believes that. But there is an unturned stone inside him that weighs with the need for survival. He would do anything not to die.

A string of saliva hangs from his bottom lip. A thumb comes to swipe it away. In the yolk-glow of the predawn, Finn can only discern the whites of his eyes and bared teeth, the broad-chested silhouette leaning into Finn’s personal space.

“What are you doing,” Finn says - not a question, just a statement.

“You seemed lost.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Come with me.”

The foul tastes dries in his mouth. “Where?”

“Just follow me.”

Finn stands up. The room tilts sideways, and the corners of his vision soften, like fabric draped between frames.

He catches a glimpse of the universe: planets and moons streaking together in ecstasy, comets and asteroids spiraling their pale glory, everything back-lit by the radiation of its birth. There are a thousand generations in the space between the stars; people merge and expand into an endless consciousness.

He realizes, the thought striking him like lightning, _the secret to immortality is to love the Force. It is alive. He is alive within it and it is alive within him._

"Careful," Kylo's voice echoes. "We're light years away from each other and your mind's not a spaceship. Just be one with the Force. Let it carry you."

Like a door distorting farther away the harder he tries to reach it, he can’t grasp the scale. He slips between the cracks, and the door closes. He forgets most of what he saw in that microsecond, even his realization, except the emotion it gave him.

They’re laying down in a meadow. A warm breeze sends waves through the long grass, and the hills undulate into the blueish-green misted horizon, where slender obsidian spires rise to an incomprehensible height.

When he looks at the bright landscape of clouds above, pierced by those glittering beetle-black towers, he feels the need to hold his breath, like a butterfly under a bell jar. He knows this place, _some nightmare of Naboo,_ though he's never been here.

"Sometimes," Finn says, "I can't follow the, uh... I don't know about this sequence of events, where it starts, where it ends. I'm in your head, or, you're in my head showing me your thoughts, or... it's like a dream. Us, dreaming, together?"

Kylo huffs out a laugh. His long, dark curls lick his earlobes. “Like I said. You seemed lost.”

"It's all your fault."

"I think you were this way before us happened."

"Then you just made it worse."

"I tend to do that."

"Shut up." Finn turns over in the grass. "I don't want to hear that self-deprecating stuff. You... you killed people! You don't get to mope around over your own war crimes. I don't want to hear it."

“You want to talk about war? Let’s talk about war. What does the Republic fight for? And the Jedi? What do they fight for? It's a what, not a who, not the people -"

“Shut up! Take me back!”

Kylo opens his mouth, and Finn knows what’s coming. When he wants to make another self-deprecating comment, Kylo’s eyes reflect this pathetic gleam when he’s decidedly not pathetic and instead the most powerful dark side wielder in the galaxy. Part of him wants to punch Kylo, and part of him - just stares at his mouth.

And then the sun goes out. Finn pulls his knees up to his chin and covers his eyes with his hands. The temperature plummets, and for a moment he feels weightless, feels that floating sensation in his stomach. Through his fingers, light flashes in a strobe effect.

There’s no sound. The shadows of the hills grows longer and colder. The world, empty and dark, revolves in the wrong direction.

"You're letting your emotions control you," Kylo says, sounding far away. "It's reacting to you."

"You're one to talk."

"What did you see when you meditated? In the Force?"

"Why?"

"Just think about what you saw. But not too hard, or you might die."

"Are you _trying_ to kill me?"

"Not really. But... just don't think too hard about it, to be safe."

"Okay, okay." Finn takes a deep breath. "When I tried to follow you here, I saw... at first I just saw... there was - and I felt - "

"Focus on what you felt. Can you bring us there?"

"I felt like a child. When other people say that, it means they feel safe and happy. For me... it means I feel scared. And what I saw in the Force, it made me want to be a child again. But as a Jedi. I don't know if I can bring us there. I don't know what that's like."

"I do."

He reaches for Kylo, and he reaches for Finn.

/ / /

A battalion of children spar outside the temple, in the black thicket of trees. Their lightsabers hum across the spectrum of kyber - mostly blues and greens, a few of them yellow or purple. They've been practicing since morning, and now deep twilight blooms in the forest.

Rain hisses on the flickering edges of his blade. Ben can move pebbles, stones, boulders. Someday, islands, and then, worlds. He trains with a younger boy, locking sabers and practicing their footwork almost like dancers, in spite of the burgeoning motion of their new bodies.

Ben's eyes are too big for his face - and his ears for his head, his feet for his legs, his shoulders for his torso. The younger boy has dimples and many friends. He works hard, he smiles wide, he learns fast. And he gets back up. Every time Ben pushes him, he gets back up.

Their grey tunics are soaked by the storm and their own sweat. They turn in a wheel like tumbling spokes, digging their heels into the muddy sand and dodging the heat of each other's sabers. In the trees, the coastal rain beats its drum, pitter-pattering through the leaves.

Ben strikes and the boy parries. Grinding his teeth, Ben attempts the same when the boy takes initiative. A lock of hair catches in the wind and Ben watches it like a cut ribbon, unraveling and falling away. He loses all momentum. He touches the place where warmth from the boy's blade lingers.

The boy cries, "I'm sorry!"

Ben is unhurt, physically. But.

The padawans never listen to Ben, and they love the younger boy, except when Ben has a new game. He doesn't play tag or hide-and-seek. They stopped trying long ago, and sit apart from him during class. But when Ben lays down his rules, some animal instinct wakes up and comes to play. It doesn't matter if it's family, or a friend, or even an adult. Nothing scares a pack of children-turned-wolves.

"Coward," Ben sneers, suddenly hating this boy, channeling rage older than himself. "Why are you sorry? You'll never leave this temple. You'll live in comfort, and you'll _die,_ and everyone you love will _die,_ and then it's like you never existed. I guess there has to be people like you so the real heroes can save the day."

The faces of the other children smear into blurry watercolors, and Ben’s voice rings a bell for them to follow. Their ink-splotch hands, soft and bloodless, reach for the younger boy. The air fills with his sobs like a flock of birds.

“You wouldn’t have stood a chance,” Kylo says.

“Did anyone?” Finn crosses his arms over his chest, shivering. “They were just kids. And you were older than a lot of them.”

“You don’t want to be a Jedi. It’s a fate worse than death.”

“Better than a stormtrooper.”

“Every Jedi, every stormtrooper is a child his family decided they could live without.”

The padawans laugh as they seize the boy, and they carry him into the woods, despite his kicking and screaming. Calligraphy smudges in the crumpled paper sky.

Kylo looks away. “People did what I wanted when I was angry.”

“Are you just now realizing you might’ve done something bad?”

“I dunno.” Ben turns his eyes to Finn, the one lurking in the mist, not being dragged into it. “I knew it was bad and I did it anyway.”

Kylo lays his hand between Finn’s shoulder blades. “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something bad? Not _heroic_ bad, but _real_ bad.”

“On Starkiller. I wanted to kill you. But I guess that still counts as heroic.”

Kylo blinks and moves his hand.

“Why am I here?”

“What?”

“Why are you here with me? The war is over. I should be rotting in prison. But you want me here.”

“I don’t - what?”

The children are long gone, even their chalky afterimages. The rain falls in a seamless river, cleansing away the trees and pooling in a dark basin behind them.

“You could shut me out. Learn from Rey.”

“I didn’t really think about that.”

“Am I here to help you?” Kylo gives a Solo half-smile. “Is this redemption?”

Finn steps back, into water. The hair on his forearms stands up. He's no longer shivering; in fact, he's sweating. His huge pupils reflect Kylo’s like particles of stardust forming iridescent ice-rings around gas giants. He can see himself in Kylo; he can see through Kylo. He watches himself retreat into the rising water, and Kylo follows as he runs away.

Their bodies move into the lake, bellies and elbows pressed together, all limbs and flesh.

In the pure, wet heat of the late afternoon, where the summer runs blood-hot and shimmering around them, Kylo kisses him. His breath laps at the nape of Finn’s neck, and then the cruel curve of his mouth crashes against his throat.

The low-growing trees shade them from the dizzying sun, reflecting against the surface of the lake in a glossy film of light. Kylo pulls him to the shore and - in the place where the endless blue sky touches the dark sand, by the smooth chopping of the waves and the straining muscles of his thighs - their arms circle each other like folded wings.

Finn’s lips part.

/ / /

“Love,” Phasma starts, “is knowing your target, putting them in your reticule, and together, achieving a singular purpose against statistically long odds.”

Three rows of troopers stand before her with FN-2187 in front. His posture is perfect: chin up, chest out, shoulders back, stomach in. He stares straight ahead, and his eyes meet nothing. Phasm’s helmet catches the light coming from the far corner of nowhere, looping forever at the end of time. Their silhouettes interrupt the sterile infinity, otherwise untouched by anything physical.

“You take the shot, one hundred-twenty kilometers away. And you make it.”

Her armor clank-clanks as she makes her way through the rows. FN-2187's breath quickens, panting in his helmet.

“Your target goes down. You adjust your reticule, and you find the next target.” She’s coming back to the front. “Love is a constant recalibration.”

He hears her stop. He doesn’t look.

“Do you love the First Order?"

He clenches his hands and the leather of his military-issue gloves creaks like an old machine.

"Do you love it? Would you kill for it?" Her filtered voice rasps through her moderator. "Civilians? Their children? Would you burn their homes for your love?"

From every direction comes a low rumble like the empty belly of an enormous beast. It reverberates under his feet, a single pulsing strain narrowed in on him. He flinches and loses balance, falling on his back. Pain flares from his Starkiller injury.

Rows and rows of unmoving troopers continue on a mobius strip into the white expanse. He crawls backwards, chest heaving. He can hear Phasma's armor but can't see her through the rows.

As loud as he can muster, he calls out a name.

/ / /

“Sir,” says Phasma, standing at attention. “I am most eager to begin the process of his reconditioning. At your command.”

“That won’t be necessary." Kylo marches; Phasma falls into line behind him. Her helmet gleams like teeth under the harsh light.

“Are you going to interrogate him yourself?”

“Don’t question me.”

“Of course, sir.”

The hydraulic door hisses open and closes behind him. Kylo takes a seat in front of the energy field that cuts the room in half. On the other side, Finn lays on a small cot. They stare at each other, as if waiting for the other to draw his blaster first.

Kylo breaks the silence with, "So I think you were close to the truth. When you said you might be Force-sensitive."

Finn laughs. "And do you think I might be right - or close to the truth - about you doing something bad?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"I said maybe."

"How's prison?"

Kylo makes a face.

Finn says, "Missing your mom?"

"You don't have to mock me." Kylo folds his hands in front of him. His presence is like the sea, or the way Rey described Ahch-to. Intensely strange and sad. She said she could watch the waves for hours, but it always left her feeling incomplete. “And I guess I don’t have to tolerate it, but I do.” He pauses. “Do you know why?”

“Do you regret anything you did?”

Kylo lets out a deep sigh. “Every time you realize you have feelings for me, it’s like you have to remind yourself that you hate me or something.”

“I never said I had -”

“We kissed.”

“In a dream.”

Finn avoids Kylo’s huge, watery eyes. He thinks of Rey, sleeping in a damp and cold hut, eating fish and unseasoned soup for days on end, listening to the tunnel of wind beckoning through the dark caves. He thinks of Rey, ending the war, bringing the prodigal son home, saving the galaxy. He thinks of the last time he talked to her and the first time he did. He thinks of the muscles of her back as he watches her walk away. The end and the beginning are one and the same.

“She’d teach you, if you asked.”

“I’m not going to, and don’t ask me why.”

“I don’t need to. I can see your thoughts.”

“I wasn’t thinking about how I want her to teach me.”

“But you want to be a Jedi.”

“I was thinking about how I should be in love with her, but I’m not. It’s like everything’s there, except the part that makes it real. Everything’s in the right place, but also, not? There’s a missing piece. I love her. I’m not in love. I don’t know how.”

“I can teach you.”

“Just because Rey said no, doesn’t mean I’ll say yes.”

“Not about the Force.” Kylo leans forward, until his nose almost touches the force shield. “All I need from you is - I need the link. The bond between us. Keep it open. Let me visit you, in the night.”

“I don’t want to be your accomplice.”

“You make me want to be better."

"That's not enough."

"I'll do anything." He pants like a rabid dog. "Please, please, please - I want to go places with you. See other worlds. I want to know what you think about them. I need to know your thoughts on - everything. I'll stay in prison for the rest of my life if it means I can dream of you. I'll stop talking about the summer when I tried to drown myself."

"Why me? Why did it have to be me?"

"Is it really that bad? Can't you admit that you think of me, too? Just a little bit. That I'm bad, but you still think of me."

Finn moves slightly and the spark of pain makes him wince. He looks above, at the geometric miasma lurking where the ceiling should be. It writhes in shapes of agony, and glowing prisms rotate deep in the cataract fog. He's close enough to touch them. Reform them like raw clay.

He’s going to wake up soon, on his cot in the real world. He can feel the morning coming as the miasma clears.

Kylo waits on the other side, huge and beautiful in an ugly way. He wants to smash his mouth against Kylo's and grind their bones together into dust.

"There are," Finn says, "worse things."

/ / / 

Light from the window slants on his face. He squints his eyes against it, head throbbing. The space between his cot and the door is strewn with Endor Day confetti.

He reaches out, hand closing in the empty air.

**Author's Note:**

> "Every Jedi is a child his family decided they could live without” is a quote from _Yoda: Dark Rendezvous._ What Phasma says about love is a quote from KOTOR, something HK-47 said. thnx for reading.
> 
> You do not have to be good.  
You do not have to walk on your knees  
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.  
You only have to let the soft animal of your body  
love what it loves.  
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.  
Meanwhile the world goes on.  
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain  
are moving across the landscapes,  
over the prairies and the deep trees,  
the mountains and the rivers.  
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,  
are heading home again.  
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,  
the world offers itself to your imagination,  
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -  
over and over announcing your place  
in the family of things.
> 
> "Wild Geese," Mary Oliver


End file.
